Adding basement heating zone

[adrian]

Hi guys, need some advice on installing new baseboard heating zone in my basement.

Came here last week after having a plumber quote me $1500 just to install a tiekick heater in my kitchen. I moved to New York last year from Sydney, Australia and back home we don't have baseboards or any heating needed in your house, as it's not really that cold in the winter, so I'm new to bowlers and baseboards, but I am an electrician so I'm pretty handy.

Well I read tons of threads on tiekick heaters on this site and I installed my one in an afternoon and it works a treat, installed the monoflo tees and bleeder valve, all good.

So I'm in the process of piping the 3/4 pex to the baseboard heaters, which seems straight forward.
What I'm unsure on is back at the boiler, I currently have 2 series heating zones (see pic) first floor and second floor baseboard heating and would like to add a third for basement.

Question 1. On the zone return pipes there are 2 - 3/4" pipes currently for each zone and they join into one 3/4" pipe and enter the boiler. When I add in the new 3/4" basement zone pipe do I now have to increase that 3/4" pipe that connects to the boiler? (See pic 1)

Question2. Where the system supply comes from boiler and branches off to the zone valves, do I need to increase the black pipe sizes, I've marked the pipe sizes on the pic. (See pic 2) or can I just install a 1" tee and branch off to the new zone?


Question 3. Hire a plumber?

Boiler is a Burnham series 2.


Cheers.

 

[Dana]

Is " tiekick heater" ozzie for "toe kick heater"??? ;-)

You need not increase the size of the plumbing at either the supply or return the return connection at the boiler.

If you don't have enough baseboard + toe kick heat emitter on the new zone it can short-cycle the boiler, reducing it's as-used efficiency and putting a lot of wear & tear on the boiler. How much do you have on the new zone, and which Series 2 boiler is it? (They come in 5-6 different heat rate ratings.) Or, find the nameplate panel and tell us the Input BTU &/or D.O.E. output BTU numbers. Fin tube baseboard has very little water volume (=thermal mass), so if it can't emit the full boiler output the boiler rapidly hits the high-limit temperature, then refires when the boiler finally cools to it's low limit, repeat until the thermostat for that zone is satisfied. That can add up to a lot of extra ignition cycles in the course of a year.

If it's not much heat emitter relative to the output of the boiler, it's usually better to add onto an existing zone rather than make a tiny short-cycling zone, or use something with more thermal mass than fin-tube for radiation.